“Failure or defeat”: the strong phrase from André Jardine after the elimination of América from Mexico

The America Eagles could not beat the Colorado Rapids and were eliminated in the penalty shootout (8-9) in the quarter-finals of the Leagues Cup,a tournament that was left without Aztec representation, since the blue-cream team was the last Liga MX team still alive.

Given this situation, the Americanist coach André Jardine did not hesitate to accept defeat and elimination as a failure. For a club as demanding as this one America.

“A failure or a defeat, you can choose the adjective and they all seem fair to me because we know where we stand, but it is fair. We know where we stand and the demands of America,” he declared.

“We see the desire to be in the final stages of all tournaments and when you don’t make it, regardless of the circumstances, we accept the defeat, the failure, we are going to work hard to come out stronger, try to be more competent as a team,” continued the Brazilian coach.

“At this moment, bad feelings, we are sad because we worked hard to advance, we believed that we had the conditions to fight for the title and we have them. You suffer because we played a very good match, we controlled the rival, we created goal situations, I remember three very clear situations that we normally do not miss, the rival did not have any dangerous situations. The rival did not have a single dangerous situation”; he analyzed. André Jardine about his team’s defeat.

The coach took the blame off Luis Angel Malagon and Igor Lichnovski for missing the penalties and pointed out that his goalkeeper had worked well all week and had his assigned penalty if the shootout went too long. He also considered that Igor is a leader of the team and for that reason it was good that he took one of the first five penalties.

“Malagón trained well and of course, most teams left the goalkeeper at the end and he had his assigned penalty. We followed an order where you see who trained well, who has experience to take the moment and is a leader. Why do I put Igor (to take the penalty)? Because he is a leader and experienced. If he fails it is not because of experience or authority. He trained well, just as I saw Zico fail and I saw important players fail at important moments, today it was Igor and Malagón. We have to be calm to look at the things we did well and come out stronger and come out of this tournament stronger than when we entered,” he concluded.

Jardine said that Brian Rodríguez is the perfect replacement for Julián Quiñones. “I consider him to be the true replacement for Quiñones, now he plays more often and has minutes. Brian was doing very well in the last tournament, but after his injury he lost some space, but he was very professional and waited patiently. We have to bet on Brian, we have to give him an important sequence, the best version of Brian is yet to come.”

Finally, the Brazilian coach of América made a comparison between Liga MX and MLS: “There is no difference between MLS and Liga MX: “I imagine the reverse would be exactly the same but in reverse. Probably a tournament played entirely in Mexico with the teams playing at home, I imagine the result would be similar, in reverse. The big Mexican teams would be in the final stages,” he concluded.